Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 11 February 2004
128 Mr. O'Shea asked the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if she will clarify her comments carried in national newspapers early in 2004 that the Government is examining ways of improving the lone parent benefit system; the numbers of claimants she believes are falsely receiving lone parent benefit; the way in which she intends to improve the system of allocating lone parent benefits; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [3879/04]
View answerIreland currently has among the highest proportions of lone parent families within the EU, with over 11% of households headed by a lone parent. Up to 45% are in employment, a low percentage compared to other countries. For most lone parents the one parent family payment is their main or only source of income. The duration of nearly half of these payments is for more than eight years. Long-term dependency on social welfare payments increases the likelihood of being at risk of poverty and in 2001; some 42.9% of lone parents in Ireland had a level of income, which put them in the "at risk of poverty" category.
My Department's main response to the difficulties faced by lone parents is the one-parent family payment which aims to strike a balance between providing a basic income for those who wish to care for their children on a full time basis and, at the same time, encouraging and facilitating lone parents to move into paid employment and away from long-term dependency on social welfare payments.
I have given a commitment in my Department's statement of strategy to review the income support arrangement for lone parents. The main purpose of the review is to establish the extent to which the scheme may be acting as a disincentive to recipients taking up employment, and to making the transition to full-time employment, greater self-sufficiency and a better overall standard of living for them and their children. Account will be taken in the review of the research carried out to date, not least the review of the one-parent family payment, published by my own department in September 2000, and the recent OECD review of family friendly policies, along with policies and programmes pursued in other EU countries as set out in their recently published national action plans on social inclusion.
The process will also include my Department and other relevant departments participating with the Crisis Pregnancy Agency on a committee, due to commence later this year, which will examine all the issues surrounding parenting alone, including income support and employment. Government commitment to the policies of building a more inclusive society for all make it imperative that social welfare payments, funded by the taxpayer, are targeted at those most in need and are not abused.
Part of my Department's responsibility is the control of fraud and abuse on pension schemes, including the one-parent family scheme, through claim reviews and following up on reports of suspected fraud in individual cases. In 2003, a total of 757 lone parent claims were terminated and 124 cases had their entitlement reduced as result of anti-fraud activity yielding savings of €15.2 million.
